My Blogging Story

I just thought it would be nice to write a little bit of background about myself and my motivations, aspirations and my reasons for blogging as well as reflecting on the year that was. I love reading these kinds of posts and learning more about the person behind the blog.

I’ve been blogging about five years or more on a variety of subjects – books, film, fashion, travel and also a little bit of beauty. I mainly read fashion blogs to begin with and read a few beauty blogs as well. After a while I started developing more of an interest in beauty than fashion, the number of beauty blogs I read began to outnumber the fashion blogs I read. I also took a trip to the USA which got me obsessed with a lot of their brands… and Sephora of course! I mainly read US and UK beauty blogs until one day I decided to google for some Australian beauty blogs since a lot of the products on the overseas blogs were inaccessible to me. The first couple of Aussie beauty bloggers I discovered were Jess from Miss J Shopaholic and Jade from Jade Musing. It was through looking at links on their pages that I also discovered Violet Le Beaux and Celina from Fables in Fashion.

For a time I had absolutely no idea how many Australian beauty bloggers were out there. I loved to read their blogs but I would never comment on posts because I was scared of saying something dumb, until Jess held a blog giveaway which I decided to enter… and subsequently won! Once I discovered blog giveaways I would enter all of them because it was so much fun but through commenting on the giveaway posts and reading peoples comments I started to realise that all of these people entering these competitions had blogs of their own! I couldn’t believe just how many Australian beauty bloggers were out there, a whole world opened up.

I began following a lot of beauty bloggers on Twitter and I’d ask beauty advice. I could see how friendly and supportive all the girls were towards each other and so kind to me as a non-blogger that eventually I started toying with the idea of starting my own blog. I had loads of beauty products in my collection that I’d never seen reviews for and I thought that if I could review them it could be useful for someone looking for a review online. People also love hearing about life as a flight attendant so I thought I could put my own spin on beauty as someone who flies constantly and had my own set of needs. I chose the name “Beauty in the Sky” because I used to call my old blog “Megan in the Sky” and since this would be a beauty blog and I fly for a living it made a lot of sense. The first thing I did was buy the beautyinthesky.net domain and set up an email for it. I think that doing those two things first is the best way a blogger can start off so that way you don’t have a .blogspot or .wordpress.com domain name but a domain name that you own and can be moved if you end up moving to another host.

When I first started the blog I didn’t really push it or promote it, I was too nervous for anyone to read it and so I was kind of just blogging to myself to begin with. I wanted to get better at writing and taking photos before I really let my blog out into the world.

It was through joining in Sara-May’s Face of the Day Challenge that I began to post pictures of myself and really learning about makeup. It gave me a lot of ideas and material for posts and it was also a great way to get to know the other bloggers that took part through commenting on each others blogs and chatting on Twitter. I gained a lot more confidence in myself through this period and I think that doing this so early on in starting my beauty blog really helped me put myself out there and get my blog out into the world.

To begin with I used a free blogging website to host my blog but then I began to realise how many limitations that placed on me. I wanted my website to stand out, be better, individual, different. I was so fortunate that Matt from Your Move offered to help me set up a self hosted WordPress blog. We set to work designing my dream website, I took features from blogs that I found easy to navigate and loved the look of. I wanted a clean, white, uncluttered website so that my logo and my own blog posts would be the major focus. Once he was on board I was intent on creating the perfect logo and I had just the perfect graphic designer in mind. I commissioned, Megan Isabella a very talented illustrator and friend to create the logo for me. My original idea was to have the words Beauty in the Sky running across a set of wings but I’d told Megan to come up with her own ideas and she came up with the idea of the portrait with possibly a flight attendant hat or aviator hat with goggles. Her ideas blew me away and were so much better than anything I could have ever dreamed of myself. I loved the idea of the aviator hat a lot more as it reminds me of Amelia Earhart, intrepid female aviator and it’s more in keeping with my personality. The flight attendant hat just felt too girly for me. You can see some of the original concept sketches here.

I have been so fortunate now that I’ve met up with a few other bloggers in Melbourne since I fly there constantly and they’re just so lovely and friendly in real life. The high point of the year has to be finding out that I’d scored an invite to the Australian Beauty Blogger’s Weekend. I got to spend the weekend with 85 talented and beautiful bloggers that share the same passion for beauty that I do. I learned so much from the weekend that has pushed me to excel even further and create a more enjoyable website. I have spent loads of money getting my blog to where it is today, on products, graphic design and the spontaneous trip to Sydney. I am very fortunate that I can afford to do this and while I know that my blog will never earn back the money it has cost, the friendships, the fun, the learning experience has been worth every penny. I feel a sense of joy just looking at my website and knowing that it belongs to me and my heart and soul has gone into it.

I hope that in 2012 I can continue improving my blog in as many aspects as possible. Writing, photography as well as my own makeup application skills.

This has been quite a wordy post so thank you if you managed to make it through all of my rambling! I’d love to see other bloggers post their blogging stories too and link to it in the comments.

My favourite Face of the Day from 2011 – Nars Rajasthan.